Administration of hazardous medicaments such as cytotoxins and the like has long been a nuisance to the personnel which on a daily basis administrates the hazardous medicaments. During preparation of medicaments, administration or after treatment, nursing personnel is exposed to the risk of contamination from the hazardous medicaments. Such contamination may be in the form of liquid, aerosol or vapour medicaments, derived from spillage due to ill handling or just wrong handling of equipment or instruments. Leakage from technical equipment which has been used right is however also a problem, even if leakage occur in very small doses. Due to long exposure to hazardous medicaments nursing personnel can still become ill from very small quantities of hazardous medicaments. It is therefore important to minimize leakage and minimize the risk of leakage.
One specific hazardous step is when e.g. nursing personnel is transferring a medicament from one fluid container to another; such transfer usually involves the use of a piercing member such as a needle. To protect the nursing personal involved, piercing member protection devices are commonly used. Such devices are arranged to protect the user, not only from contamination but also from accidentally piercing themselves or any other third persons. One example of such a piercing member protection device, having a needle, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,564,054 (Gustaysson).
Piercing devices, such as the ones described in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,564,054 (Gustaysson) generally require a mating connector or adaptor to enable assembly with a vial to prevent leakage. To enable a firm connection with a vial, medical device connectors, also referred to as medical device adaptors, for connecting piercing devices to vials have thus been developed.
Such medical device connectors are not seldom designed with a specific function in mind such as leakage security. This has generally led to more and more technically advanced connectors for connecting a piercing device to a vial in a leak safe manner.